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Villainous Wiki:Manual of Style
You may be looking for Page organization This guide details how articles should be formatted and designed. Its purpose is to make sure the wiki's style is consistent, as well as to minimize the need for format, style, or code corrections. Note: This manual is still a work in progress. Anything written here is subject to change, and certain exceptions may apply. General Language *This wiki uses Standard American English (center, flavor, color, instead of centre, flavour, colour). There are a few exceptions to this: **"Epilogue", "Monologue", "Dialogue" etc. should be preferred over "Epilog", "Monolog", "Dialog" **Grey is preferred over gray. **Not really an exception, but occasionally, there are certain words most English speakers will spell with the -our ending instead of the regular -or ending. This is usually a case by case thing, all that I can think of off the top of my head is "glamour". *In this wiki, the use of the singular "they" is accepted. This is not used in most contexts but it is still worthy of note. **The reflexive form of the singular "they" used in this wiki is "themself". *When making possessive forms of singular and proper nouns ending with s, append s'' at the end. Example: The Smiths's House. *The serial comma, also known as the "oxford comma", should always be used. **Example: Bring John, a dancer and a clown to the party). *When using "long dashes" an em dash (—) is preferred over an en dash (–), and also over a regular dash or minus sign (-). **An em dash (—) is preferred over all other dashes when listing a source for a quote, as seen in the Quote template. This should also be done with a space inbetween the source and the em dash. **An en dash (–) should be used when using a dash in replacement of the words "to", "from", etc. ***Good: 1999–2000 ***Bad: 1999-2000 ***Bad: 1999—2000 *The tense used in the wiki should be the Present tense, unless, of course, one is referring to a dead or no longer existing subject. * Under no circumstances should multiple periods ever be grouped together, except in the case of making an ellipsis. ** Good: My favorite character is 5.0.5. ** Bad: My favorite character is 5.0.5.. * A period should not go inside the quotation marks of a title, nor should any other punctuation that is not actually a part of the title. ** Good: The first episode of Villainous is "The Perception of Evil". ** Bad: The first episode of Villainous is "The Perception of Evil." * When quoting something, the period at the end of a quote serves to both end the quote and the sentence. * One should only use a single exclamation point and/or question mark. Additionally, exclamation points should always go after question marks (example: "What's this?! I don't look like that!", not "What's this!? I don't look like that!!!"). Also, interrobangs are cool and nerdy, but not standard, so don't use them. Article Content *Articles should be written in an unbiased, encyclopedic tone. Avoid casual, conversational language or styling. Write it like you're writing a school report, or sending a message to your boss. Keep it serious. *Don't make things too long. Bigger is not always better. A good example of this is the Appearance section of a character page. This isn't a fashion website, so keep it to a single, relatively short paragraph. All in all, avoid "stretching" the text in order to make it seem more substantial. If there isn't any more information on a topic, just leave it as is. Not every short article is a stub, some things are just too simple to talk about as much as others. *The first instance of the name of an article within the article itself should be '''bolded. *''Villainous'', as well as all other large works, such as video games and books, should always be italicized. *Episode titles, as well as the titles of other short works, should be in quotes. *Galleries should have images centered and have the "add button" hidden, which can be achieved by using "" instead of "". Preferred Terminology * Although it may seem counter-intuitive, Main Character(s) is preferred over Major Character(s), even though Minor Character(s) is used. * "Gender" is preferred in almost all contexts over "sex", mostly because, in the situations where these things are not the same for a given person, the former is more useful, and more respectful. While this is not often important, there are situations where it is. ** "Gender" refers to a given person's gender identity, which can differ from their biological sex, genitals, etc., but, of course, does not always. Note: If you don't understand what this means, look it up, don't just ignore it. Also don't just ignore it if you disagree with it. That isn't cool bro. * All of the "shorts" released in 2012 should be referred to as webisodes and episodes. Webisodes are a subcategory of episodes. ** Collectively, they should be referred to as "the webisodes" or "the 2012 shorts". * All of the 2017 or 2018 shorts should be referred to as both shorts and episodes. Shorts are a subcategory of episodes. ** Collectively, they should be referred to as "the 2017/2018 shorts" or possibly even simply "the shorts", or, in some contexts, "the series". Images * A high quality, low or lossless format is preferred over all others. The most popular of these is .png. Please, please, please, please, do not use .jpg/.jpeg. There is literally no possible reason why you should use .jpg/.jpeg over .png. * Please try and give every image file a descriptive name. Links * Don't link to an article within that article itself. I'm pretty sure I don't need to say why this is pointless. * Do not put links in section headers. * Only hyperlink the base word of something, and leave anything else in plain text (examples: "5.0.5.'s ice cream", "...it will follow Black Hat advertising a resort hotel for unhelpful henchmen..."). * Only link to an article once within the article, unless: ** One of the links is inside an infobox or a list (the Appearances section of a Character page is a good example of this) and one is in the actual content of the page. ** The two links link to the same article, but to different sections. References References should not simply be links to a page (example: website.com/page/). What you can Reference Here at the Villainous Wiki, as long as a reference makes sense, it's valid. If someone completely unrelated to the official team of the show does the math and says Flug's left eyeball is 0.67589 centimeters wide, that's a valid source. Yes, this means you may add your own "research" as a reference, just make sure it's actually good. How to Reference Before worrying about how the references should be formatted, it should be known that things that are somewhat likely to be deleted (tweets, blog posts, etc.) should be ran through a page saving website. Although there are many methods of doing this, the currently accepted one to use in this wiki is the WayBackMachine. (Videos and Flash Player media sometimes cannot be archived through the WayBackMachine, so archiving a link on YouTube isn't necessary. Downloading it yourself and uploading to Google Drive is an acceptable way to archive, but it is mostly a last resort, and it's OK to not include that in articles.) Your reference likely won't be changed if you use something else but it's preferred to use that. If you're debating whether or not to run something through it, run it through it. Better safe than sorry. Please use the templates Cite web and Cite episode for references. How to Place References References take the form of a superscript number between two square brackets, placed in the text of an article. References always come after a punctuation mark. However, they should go before brackets, parentheses, dashes (when used as an alternative to parentheses). They should not go before commas. Examples: ; Do : Villainous's first episode was released on September 15.1 : Villainous (released on September 151) is a show by Alan Ituriel.2 : Villainous —a show by Alan Ituriel1— released it's first episode on September 15.2 ; Do not : Villainous (released on September 15)1 is a show by Alan Ituriel2. Citation needed Use the template "Citation needed" when a citation is needed. Pretty simple. When not to use Citation needed: * If a better citation is needed. In this case, use Better citation needed. * If the uncited claim is completely ridiculous or otherwise very unlikely. In this case, just delete it. * If there isn't a citation needed (obviously). * To be a dick (also obviously). As with References, the Citation needed template comes after punctuation, and before closing parentheses/brackets. Golden Rule Above all else, the golden rule is that if you're unsure, or don't understand things, ask one of the admins. We don't mind helping out, we're not a bunch of stern assholes, we're four people who really like a cartoon. Give a ring on Discord or something like that, we'll be happy to clear things up, and hopefully clean up the guide to make things better in the future. * iWander (founder) * AntiGravityMaster (bureaucrat) * Roy Petault (admin) * Top-gem (admin) Category:Policy